Here's What Tiger King Left Out About The Real Story
Even the calmest, most mundane life would be difficult to sum up in five hours and change, and the life of Joe Exotic has been anything but mundane. Still, the makers of the hit Netflix series Tiger King: Muder, Mayhem and Madness were tasked with fitting the entrepreneur's essence into seven 45-minute episodes. The details of life at a shady big cat zoo were drippingly saucy and hard to look away from, but they were in no way all-encapsulating.
In an interview with Page Six, Tiger King co-director Eric Goode went so far as to say that there was enough extra story already on film to justify a second season, stating "There are a lot of questions that people would like answered, and we will see if we can answer those. We do have a ton of footage... We did film (more) after we locked picture. We did film the sentencing (of Joe Exotic) and John (Finlay) with his new teeth."
With court proceedings and a fresh set of chompers laid out, you have to wonder: what else was left on the cutting room floor?
Heavy hangs the head that wears the tiger crown
For one, Tiger King gave Joe's life as a married man short shrift. While three of his husbands were featured in the documentary, two more were lost in the mix. Joe's first husband, Brian Rhyne, died of HIV-related complications in 2001. His next husband, J.C. Hartpence, was allegedly deeply troubled, with New York Magazine stating that he once threw Joe into a wall with so much force that Joe was sent to the hospital. Hartpence is currently in in prison for first degree murder.
On the subject of Joe's relationships, it's also worth noting that the same New York Magazine piece quotes one of Joe's ex-boyfriends as claiming that the car accident which Joe says shattered his spine actually only broke his shoulder.
As for weirdness, another missed beat involves the alligators that burned up in the Joe Exotic television studio. According to People, Joe claims that they were originally owned by Michael Jackson. If nothing else, it'll make for a killer cameo in the king of pop's inevitable biopic.